Time to redesign the office?
Do I still want to be in an office? It might be good for the business; what about me? Maybe try designing it for people like me that work there?
The spatial design of the workplace has always been a direct response to the structure and culture of the organisation that inhabits it. The ‘open office’ that evolved from the Burolandschaft model in the 1960s and 1970s — iconically in the shape of Herman Miller’s Action Office — had flexibility baked into it, reflecting the rapid modernisation of economies and businesses in the post war period. Within twenty years it had degenerated into a matrix of cubicles.
In the late 1990s the dot-com boom-and-bust deconstructed the workplace again, initially for technology companies and subsequently for digital and creative businesses, a trend which corporates latched onto, somewhat opportunistically, with the open-plan workspace. But by the onset of COVID-19 that was already proving to be unpopular with employees.
Workplace adaptability is cyclical, with successive rounds of inbuilt flexibility each collapsing into a new form of rigidity and vice-versa.
External threats and organisational fads
This time around things are different. The current pandemic has transformed, in a very short time, the way many people work. The word most commonly used to describe these new work patterns is ‘flexible’. Organisational fads are not driving these changes, but profound shifts in how and where people work, catalysed by the external threat of a global public health, social and economic crisis. The coming revolution in workplace design is about securing people’s lives, livelihoods and lifestyles in a future which is extremely difficult to predict and, as we have seen in 2020, can change in unexpected ways virtually overnight.
“The workplace design revolution is about securing people’s lives, livelihoods and lifestyles in a future which is extremely difficult to predict.
In response, flexibility needs to be embedded in the workplace at a deeper level than it has been previously. Younger employees, especially those working in technology, embrace radical flexibility in the workspace. With no reason to endorse an outdated ‘growth’ model in which offices expanded physically each time the firm moved on a stage, they expect the way space is used to change, dynamically, quickly and with minimal disruption.
A real life social network
“communal space might not just be located within the office; it could end up being the office”
One way of describing this new generation of work environment is as a physical space that acts like a real-life social network. Whilst adult office workers living in suburbs and commuter dormitory towns may welcome fewer commutes, reduced direct management oversight and less time spent away from their families, younger cohorts crave the sociability, serendipity, variety and creative buzz of the shared workplace.
Businesses in the creative, technology or knowledge sectors are especially dependent on ‘collisions’ between diverse people, disciplines, expertise and perspectives in order to generate the ideas and inventions that can be commercialised into new products, services, campaigns, content or experiences. People need a place where they can collide safely.
The balance between remote and centralised working will, naturally, vary between sectors, businesses, teams and individuals. It will also ebb and flow over time. Virtual communication will inevitably increase as platforms and tools become more sophisticated and better adapted to the new ways of working that are beginning to emerge. As a result, the new, deeply flexible workplace will need to accommodate three fundamental work modes simultaneously: managed community; task-oriented individualism; online/real world interoperability. It will need the capacity to shift the balance between those three modes, frequently and on the fly.
Shifting Modes
The managed community
This aspect of the new workplace is an evolution from startup-style communal space into an area that might not just be located within the office; it could end up being the office. Although it might superficially resemble its predecessor, spaces for managed community bring people together in a more deliberate, planned and consciously designed way, subtly directing and managing the interactions between them.
“adapt to thrive not just to survive”
Small groupings of sofas, coffee tables, chairs and cafe tables could spread to fill the entire office; shared social and collaborative areas will be created in the open, rather than being enclosed with fixed walls and, where possible, blended seamlessly into outside space; they will be equipped to support multiple work modes, embracing socialising, collaborating, focusing and rejuvenating whilst allowing for adequate physical distancing between seating and circulation to enhance employees’ feelings of safety and comfort.
Task-oriented individualism
Designing space for this doesn’t mean a return to the single desk or cubicle; indeed, the only dedicated personal space may be a locker. And whilst ‘hoteling’ — dropping into the workplace for a short burst of taskwork — has become institutionalised in the concept of hot-desking, we should recognise that there’s nothing genuinely radical about it.
It’s really just taking short-term possession of a conventional workstation.
The future of drop-in is more innovative; designers and their clients will be able to mix-and-match from an eclectic range of elements and configurations, including desks, ‘high tops’, soft seating, single-person pods, ‘touch-down’ rooms (private spaces for two people), videoconferencing zones, personal tables, collaboration pods and more. Each will need easy access to power and connectivity, with sufficient space overall to maintain safe separation and circulation.
Online/real world interoperability
Designing for this needs to be based around the ways in which remote communications have evolved through extended periods of working from home. Business leaders, managers and employees all believe that some of these changes will become permanent — though they may not agree on which ones. What does seem highly probable is that people working from home, those doing so remotely from other locations and others in the office will all need robust, always-on, bandwidth-rich connections — between themselves and external partners and collaborators.
“The goal of programmable workplace design is to embed new ways of working and future technology into a hackable space”
In large offices, the electronic communications that proliferated in open plan are unlikely to go away, as people are discouraged from moving around and mixing indiscriminately. As a result, working, exchanging and collaborating via screens will be taken to the next level, beyond ‘videoconferencing’. The upgraded virtual meeting or workshop will demand different kinds of space to link those working IRL with remote colleagues at varying scales, from one-on-one taskwork to a virtual conference. New technologies will need to be embedded in new types of internal space, with smart solutions for acoustic privacy.
The overall goal of programmable workplace design is to embed new ways of working and future technology into a hackable space in which the working parts are readily moveable — by users — to suit their work tasks and interactions at a particular point in time.